Random Musings & Book Reviews

We are on the second to the last episode of the Sister Catherine Cesnik murder story and the Fr Joe Maskell sexual assaults and raps in the Netflix show The Keepers. It’s very hard to watch as these high school girls have been brutalized by these two priests, a gynecologist, and a therapist maybe a psychologist. People in the DAs office, the police department, and within the high school itself colluded with the archdiocese and other priests to subvert justice for the teenagers from a Baltimore high school, and a nun who they murdered. Baltimore reminds me of the Southside of Milwaukee or the Southside of Chicago. Very Catholic, priests can do no wrong, the girls are dumb about sex and their own body parts, m let alone what is being done to them.

We’ve been watching an episode a day. Today we drove out to Golden Valley and picked up Mini Me’s phone as he took a Xanax bar and was all messed up, left his phone and keys in a kids car who then got a DWI. The other kid was selling something like 80 Xanax, but didn’t get popped by the cops for more than like 9 pills. The parents told us they police missed numerous pills. And her car was completely pulled apart. It’s unreal to me the shite the police do to personal property but still miss pills.

Next Sunday, ~25 September 2013, it will be 18 months to the day that Amelia Powers underwent “debulking surgery” for the aggressive brain tumour that had manifested, seemingly overnight, on March 28 2012. She had gone to bed alone that night, sobbing, “that deep, quiet crying that you don’t do very often,” upset after an argument with her then boyfriend. Waking in the middle of the night with what felt like a migraine coming on, she discovered, to her distress, that she had vomited in her sleep.

The sickness persisted, along with the headache, both of which she attributed to the “migraine.” It wasn’t until she woke up in an emergency room in Bologna, where she had travelled on business for her luxury, bespoke handbag line (despite having difficulty reading the departures board at the airport) a few days later, that the full force of what might be happening to her hit. Confused and alone, she travelled home to face the worst possible prognosis – this was a grade three anaplastic astrocytoma, the most dangerous form of brain cancer, from which the median survival time – with treatment – is 18 months.

And yet, here we are on Skype, where we have been meeting regularly across time zones since March this year, for me to document her story, and; “there’s nothing wrong with me!” she cries. “I do the Royal Ballet workout every day, I eat no meat, sugar, wheat or dairy. No alcohol. My body isrocking. I was told 100 percent I would die from this, but I feel in perfect health, perfect alignment. I feel…” she drags a hand through her shiny black hair, cropped short after her first round of chemo “…beautiful. According to them, I should be at death’s door.”

It struck me there that her stress, emotional turmoil, perhaps fear of abandonment, all were emotional things that manifested into a very real disease. Trauma in utero and trauma in early childhood all cause disease, but systemically people who were more seriously abused, the abuse leeched into their bodies and set up shop. Years later this cellular destruction caused cancer. Take Emmy’s experience with the terror attacks on the train like a decade ago. Emmy got cancer several years after the terror attack. I believe the trauma of the terror attack settled into her body and helped pave the way for the cancer cells to grow. I would bet that if I interviewed women who have advanced cancers we would find persistent trauma. Take Vicki. She had bullshit going on with her husband, they split, she was diagnosed with cancer cancer and now they’re divorced, and she’s going to lose her ovaries. She has two little ones, with her first son, Thierry, as old as Pea, or close to it.

She drinks alcohol, eats meat, drinks aspartame, and doesn’t believe her nutrition plays a role in cancer. She’d hardly believe that stress causes the problems it does. Some people don’t want to believe that stress and emotions actually play a large role in illness. People like their alcohol though. I can’t have more than one drink, two only if the drink was small (4 oz or less) or it was a super diluted champagne drink. Saturday I had a Champagne and Grapefruit cocktail at Saint Genevieve and it was pretty strong so I had a tiny shiney buzz where everything sparkled for about an hour. I was in a fugue state. It was actually very pleasant. Like a short nap. Or a shopping spree. Here’s more of the article:

“I just want them to be a platform so I can talk about this,” she turns her head to show me the bald patch she refuses to cover up. “I want to be able to talk about how we really heal.”

Because, having repeatedly refused further chemotherapy and radiation to treat her illness, Powers is the latest figurehead in a groundswell movement towards alternative therapies for cancer. In the States, “cancer thriver” Kris Carr has built a mini empire on her story (she is winning her fight against a rare strain of liver and lung cancer through diet alone), while here in the UK Lord Saatchi presented the House of Lords with his Medical Innovation Bill in December last year. Following the sudden death of his wife Josephine Hart from ovarian cancer, he described chemotherapy as “medieval, degrading and ineffective”, and wants doctors to have the choice to offer alternatives.

At present (speaking about his wife); “what you have is a situation where a woman is first tortured and then dies. Why? Because that is what’s required by law.” Not that it’s the doctors’ fault. “Everybody’s doing their level best. But they are inhibited by the prospect of a trial if something goes wrong.” This despite the fact that one doctor admitted to him that an estimated one in 10 people are killed by their cancer treatment.

Powers says she knew “their way” would kill her after one round of chemo. “My skin crawled like it was alive. I lost my hair, had two epileptic reactions. They also put me on steroids because my brain was swelling through my skull.” Met with only more of the same from her doctors, she decided to seek her own alternative. “I found a video on the Huffington Post of a man whose eight-month-old had the same tumour as me. He had treated it with Cannabis oil, and the tumour shrank in four months. Side effects? All it did was make her sleepy.”

More internet research led her to a man she calls the “Wizard of Woodacre,” a 70-year-old healer based in California manufacturing the cannabinoid tincture CBD (the psychoactive constituent THC has been removed) which she’s been taking daily since. Over email, her “Wizard” explains the legality of what they are doing; “In the State of California it’s legal. However, it to the Feds it remains a schedule 1 drug, in the same category as heroin – and supposedly with no medicinal value. Hopefully I’m a small enough operation that I’m under their radar.”

With over 500 clients, including one 37-year-old oncologist, the Wizard says inquiries rocketed after Sanjay Gupta’s CNN documentary on medicinal marijuana aired last month. He has faith that his treatment – which is harvested and blessed in the light of the full moon – “we work on an energetic and spiritual level in addition, and give thanks to the spirit of the plants in the Native American tradition” – will be made legal in his lifetime.

On a very practical level, nutrition is coming to be seen as key in cancer treatment – and prevention. On the Wizard’s recommendation, Powers has switched to a completely alkaline diet, while Laura Bond, who’s blog, Mum’s Not Having Chemo, is being made into a book that’s out in November, says that all her research has shown quitting dairy to be “the final piece in the healing puzzle” for many people. Having interviewed over 60 experts around the world for the book; “sugar and dairy are known as the ‘cancer accelerators.’ Your doctor won’t necessarily tell you that, which really shocked me, but it’s just not in their remit.”

“It can be difficult, because most physicians do not have specialist knowledge of alternative medicines and so may not feel able to supervise,” says Professor Susan Short, one of the few oncologists who would talk to me for this piece (Powers’ own doctors declined to comment). Again, this leads to “fear of litigation,” says Bond – meaning it’s safer to stick to the company line, despite the fact; “the standard treatments we offer are not as effective as we’d like,” admits Short.

She thinks only around five percent of patients refuse chemotherapy, and that while “alternatives provide hope for a better outcome, few have proven benefit. But this approach can make patients feel more in control.” And yet, as ever, she wants me to know that “the agents we use offer the best known approaches to treatment.” People like Powers and her Wizard would disagree. “About 25 percent of my clients have complete healing, 40 percent a moderate healing. These are approximate numbers, but I think they are better than the numbers for most chemo treatments.”

Of course, very limited clinical trials into medicinal marijuana have been done. Conversely, according to Cancer Research in the UK, any type of chemotherapy is tested for ten years minimum before it’s used on patients, while they also point out that the reason clinical trials of medicinal marijuana are limited is because its effectiveness can’t be proven.

But after an MRI back in April appeared to show that her tumour had been stabilized (i.e. there had been no further growth) Amelia was positively floored by her doctor’s reaction; “her answer was, ‘if you’re not going to take our treatment, then please carry on with what you’re doing. I’m really sorry that I can’t give this to you’.” In her eyes, this represented a major victory.

But when a further scan, in July this year, suggested that perhaps there might have been some growth, the prognosis left her reeling. “My doctor said; ‘in our opinion the chemo and radiotherapy didn’t work. But we think you should have a proper go with it.’ Here I am, with my hair gone, my teeth in a mess, periods which are just coming back. They all agree with me – the chemo is palliative. He even admitted; ‘Most patients chose it because they panic’.” Rather than upset, she seemed angry. “In hospital all I hear is negatives; ‘this isn’t working, it’s growing, you are not going to live from this, nobody does, we can’t do anything for you, we don’t know what to do…What the hospitals offer isn’t healing – it’s fear.”

And that is exactly what I’ve been talking about. Doctors,. hospitals, oncologists, nurse care coordinators, they all practice the art of fear. It doesn’t matter whether you have the stress of the American health care system or an NHS-type of governing body, the outcome is the same, doctors don’t discuss nutrition and they peddle fear.

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Not yet in week 8 of the CO, but mere days away. I’ve spent some time reading the CSS board and the Breast Cancer CO board. And then the moderator’s mom died. She was a bit older than I, but not by much. There are others who have died and reported it on the CSS board and I’m a bit freaked out so I increased my dosage of the CO. I am consuming Tumeric, CO, CBD Oil. Juan Carlo has put together the Bowflex, so I am going to write starting Monday and hit the Bowflex and make sure I use the rebounder for at least 5b minutes. My chest has started to hurt. I’m going to work on consistent schedule every day where I am working. If I run out of things to write about I will switch to a different topic. I’m also going to go back to cooking. Mini Me said he’d happily drive me around and dip off muffins.

I really want to get back to making the muffins. I told Juan about the piece on society I am writing. How corporations like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft have larger responsibilities to society than they think they do. If they don’t pay their taxes, how are they not creating a larger problem of entitlements coming from other people and small businesses instead of large companies like Microsoft or Apple.

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I’ve been having so much fun with Juan. He’s been giving me more space than he usually does. He’s also working on the kitchen and he’s doing other things, albeit small ones like bringing up the laundry so I can fold it. He’s been a bit more present. He hears me talk about my feelings. He hears me talk about my needs. My fears. Those are the important feelings, the ones that involve fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of not finishing my memoir before I die. Or the tumour comes back and the skull pain is horrific. It’s the swelling of the brain that creates the pain. I didn’t start hurting bad until January. That was 8 months after I started noticing visual disturbances,

QED

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It takes some serious time to work on a blog. I have to go back and add SEO tags and internal tagging in WordPress, plus I need to add images top now like 6 weeks of posts! Bloody hell! And then like a stupid cow I forgot rot email Emmy the copied old email from when I was in Denver in May, and pasting g it into a new email and sen ding it off to England. I need to do that tonight! Today has been rough. My knee has severe swelling. My chest has severe swelling on the left side and the rebounder makes me nervous. I feel like I might fall off and hurt myself. I don’t like the feeling. Bah. I am going to try and it again and do it calmly. I have the Blake killing paedophile exBF of my daughter who was his junior by 5, angry mother kills paedo BF and his cunt-holio of a mother. Because the girl’s mother has a brain tumour. I also was talking to the strapping Root & Ramble shirt wearing husband-o-mine about writing a book where a virus similar to AIDS and HIV attacks breeders in a oceans rising dystopian future where the Supreme Court is Conservative and poverty is creeping ever forward to the masses in America. Angry white woman killing spree also works, yeah?

I still have the leaky gut symptoms, and I’ve been taking the Coconut Cult every day for the past two weeks. Frustrated that the burps are consistent and bad. They don’t smell though, or at least very rarely. Like one or two and this has been going on since January. I;’m so exhausted by burps. I understand that gut health is a process so I am going to keep taking the Coconut Cult. One dose of Vicodin + Dilaudid tonight very very late, like 2230 because the afternoon headache, even after some very nice fellatiom, and then I finished with very slick Stroke 29 lube, and it felt amazing. He’d said he was frustrated and his ED was stressing him out. He got so hard I was incredibly turned on. After I took the pills he touched me and I climbed forever all over his muscular thin fingers. The migraine went away. I also took a Maxalt with the Vicodin and Dilaudid. Drank an iced coffee hoping the caffeine would help to, and I did pop the headache. I didn’t even take a sleeping pill. Went to bed at 230 and up 5 hours later but even though I felt tired I’ve been able to push through it. I have more to do today though.

I feel super disenfranchised. I have no community, and apparently in order to get some Juan and I will have to go got church, and try the whole MeetUp group again. We need a support network like we need me to stay alive for another 30 years. So many books to write. So many books to edit. So many books to finish. Videos. Consider cannabis consulting. Help Juan get his photographs together. Discuss the darkroom again.

I’m actually happy and more optimistic than I’ve been since early October 2016. Then I had my breast surgery, was put on Valium for muscle spasms, became irrationally angry and struck Juan. When I was in recovery in April I was given Valium again and I became really amped. I was already amped every second of every day and barely sleeping because the steroids were making me crazy, keeping g me awake, and making me sky high nasty. Then I was given Valium for anxiety and pain. I screamed my ever loving lungs out. At Juan. It was awful. My mood swings were nuts. I wanted to burn the house down. Punch holes in walls. Take all the pills in safe and kill myself. Yo diggity to heroin central and pick up an injection to make the pain existence disappear and send me to the other side of time. Never to come back her to this world. A beautiful place filled with an overwhelming majority of selfish, greedy, narcissistic jackwads. Brunkow didn’t seem surprised when I told him I would like Xanax because the Valium made me a raging bitch. He smiled. A tiny, dry smile. But a smile nonetheless.

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Back too my ACA kvetching. Other people tell me things like Bob from St Paul, who sent me this email. How they can use the term “affordable” in the title Affordable Care Act? I just got my renewal notice for 2016. Our premium with MN BCBS increased 63% to $590 month more for our premium. They also increased our deductible about $500. Since the ACA implementation, our insurance has doubled and will be costing us over $23,000 in 2017 when I add our $4000 deductible on top of our $1600/month premium. My wife and I are self-employed. Where we live, PT positions are generally $8-12/hour and offer no benefits. I’m frightened that I’ll have to sell my business, get a FT job just to get the benefits, so I can only work somewhere with benefits, unlike retail.

Bob, I emailed back, “Your insurance costs if you go work FT will be higher than ever before because of the current marketplace. Employers are no longer covering as much of the health insurance burden of their employees. You’ll need an extra 10 grand for deductibles. Then every year you work for your employer you your insurance costs increase, both premium and deductible.” If Bob’s cost for 2016 was $23,000 and mine was $25,000 including dental, that’s an untenable situation. People are not going to be able to continue to pay this kind of money for healthcare. Costs are out of control. Our dental insurance for two adults was $2100 in 2017, and increase of $800 on the 2016 premium. We didn’t have more services in 2016 than we’d had in 2015, it just seems that costs are out of con

Bob’s email continued. We could raise our deductible, but with the new programs our options are limited. The higher deductible will lower our monthly premium, but if we have a lot of doctor visits or a surgery we will meet the deductible and the total overall cost will be about the same. Even though our 2 kids are pretty healthy, but they’re kids. My wife may potentially need knee surgery this winter so the higher deductible will be reached with that anyway. We can enter into the MNSure marketplace to determine if we get a subsidy, but the way the system works in MN once we hit the “Submit” button we have to take what they give us. Which could potentially mean that the kids would be placed on medical assistance and only be able to go to a doctor or specialist that accepts medical assistance payments…that’s not an option as far as I’m concerned.

That’s exactly what happened to us. Juan entered $60k for projected income in 2017. That kicked Mini Me onto MA, and he’ll be 18 this year and still on MA, but since the suicide attempt we are glad because we couldn’t have afforded another deductible of a third $5700. His dental insurance is $26.xx per month, over and above the above dental premium for JC and I. We had a $300 coinsurance payment to the dentist on top of everything else. It feels to me like our healthcare system is going to implode. Explode. IDK, just something drastic is going to happen. Personally I think every single solitary citizen in America should stop paying their medical bills. We need a resistance against anymore of this monetization of people’s health. We need to demand better healthcare for all in America.

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I don’t know how to apply for Medicaid or Medicare, or apply for help because I am blind. I keep going round and round about this stuff in my head. I am 52. I have the ACA. I can’t afford $35,000 for health and dental insurance for just Juan and I; because that’s what our monthly premium + deductible equals for 2017 WITH the ACA. It’s $29,xxx if Juan doesn’t use his deductible, which is $5700. As I already explained in another blog post, the ACA is not supposed to charge more than 10%b of your income and Juan and I didn’t even earn $40,000 last year. We have been solidly living on our retirement, the Roth IRAs are almost completely liquidated, so we had to take money from our SEP IRAs. The middle Classe, even upper middle, always shouldering the American burden. I am at least 50% blind in one eye and cannot see the website well enough to apply for these benefits myself and Juan can’t seem to sit down and figure it out. Not sure if he finds it worthless, or if he just gets distracted because there is so much to do.

So I’m partially blind in one eye and unable to support myself. I could,

Get a lawyer who will then take a PERCENTAGE of my Medicaid benefits.

Go into sex work.

Force my DH to get a job to support us.

I can ill afford a lawyer siphoning off my benefits to his yacht because his brethren have designed the laws that confuse my husband. Working in the sex industry pays decent, about $40/hr amortized over a two week, 80 hour period. Remember I have studied this stuff because I think what women have to do in order to support themselves was designed by men. White men, no doubt. Although IMHO black men, brown men, yellow men, red men, all men are the problem. I don’t want to be married to someone I’m expected to force into a position because our federal government assumes the husband will support the sick wife. Although I’m not sure who is supposed to take care of the sick wife while he’s satisfying the societal need of going to work, and being gone 55-60 hours per week. I could take an Uber to an appointment, but other than that I am stuck. I am in a position where I cannot get myself anywhere because of my eyesight and I continue to hit things on the left side.

I say things like sex work because what else would I be able to do when the money runs out? I’m not able to get places because I can’t drive. I’m too visually impaired to take the bus. The light rail only runs down Cedar, but I could walk to Cedar and take a bus to MOA. After 30 years in the white collar, intelligence sector, qwho would hire me for a retail position? IDK, would Nordstrom hire me? I couldn’t’t work on my feet all day. The neuropathy from chemo in 2013-2104, most likely Taxol, has made standing for long periods physically painful. Rest assured I won’t end up in sex work, but that’s, again, because I saved my money and Nana left me money that I invested well. I am a talented and good writer and will sell this memoir. Whether that is to a new agent because Roxanne flaked out on me, or direct to the publisher. Hell, I am even willing to spend my money on self publishing because I know my voice is unique and likable. My protagonist is interesting.

I’ve been telling the DH how reading a book a day has changed me. I can barely read fiction anymore. It has to be good fiction, and usually the older stuff if better. Jeff Earl would’ve said that! Juan has been picking up books for me every week it seems. During recovery it was books on tape, and now it’s as many ebooks as I can score, large print, and then regular type. My eyes get tired faster than is what would be considered normal, but everyone keeps telling me that I am still in recovery. Recovery can technically last 2 years. There was that woman who was blind and driven around by her husband for 18 months and 4 years respectively, after repeated strokes and 5 neurosurgeries. Ouch!

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I posted on the COSS board that my gums are feelings different. Approximately 1.5-2 hours after I ingest the CO my gums, right knee, left ankle, and left chest all tingle, and it feels almost like neuropathy, or like my nerves are awake and working. Because people are morons I was asked all sorts of ludicrous questions like:

Do you take your entire dose in one sitting?

Do you take your entire dose at bed?

Did you ramp up?

Did you try ramping down?

Are people incapable of reading? I have clothes on Poshmark, and a blonde hippie chick asked me how many shirts the listing was for, and told the dumbo to read the damn description. It reads: Eileen Fisher Linen B&W Striped Long Sleeved Sweater. IDK, how many items does it look like to you are for sale? Can’t read? Get the fuck away from me. And this isn;’t to say if someone genuinely wanted help because oh, let’s see, they couldn’t see perhaps? I sincerely want to help people but I can’t, at 52, abide by any more stupid. I believe that answering the blonde hippie chick’s stupid would only encourage more stupid. And this is why my neighbors think I’m, a bitch. Ah, C’est la.

I stated that I started at zero and in a month have gotten to a .33 gram dosage per day. I talked about microdosing because of these side affects that people are telling me are in my head. I’m fine with unchartered territory, I just lose energy when I know what I’m doing and know what I’m describing and then I am accused of being the stupid one.

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Right now I’m buying online food that is specialty> teas, spices, and mushrooms. All things that can be used to fight cancer and augments a vegetarian diet. Dean & Deluca are coming out with Nutrition Bars. Flavours like Tumeric and Ginger are on offer. Sounds marvelous yes? Certainly will be antioxidant rich and busy helping your lymphocytes after digestion. Gwenyth Paltrow’s company Goop has healing stickers like the Mary’s Natural CBD patches. I use the transdermal pens and patches and just love them. I get nauseated quite a bit and the patches are super helpful. The transdermal pen I use on my forehead when I get a migraine.

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Sometimes I rationally think cancer is someplace else in my head. When I take my daily supplements I go slow and make sure I take after food, and yet I have burps like crazy that indicate my gut health sucks. Do I heave a leaky gut? What is wrong with me? Brunkow gave me Pepsid and that didn’t work at all. I’m off on medications except last night I went back to my 50 mg of Seroquil because I was exhausted. I’d only been getting 4 to 5 hours per night. My eyes ache every day and I have so much to do. I need my eyes. My diet is super gut healthy, but clearly the Coconut Cult probiotic is not doing what it needs to do. Shit son. My throat will close up sometimes and I think maybe I have esophageal cancer. When I drink super cold water my throat closes up again. My mind cannot help but dance on it’s monkey way to telling me I have chronic disease throughout my body.

I’ve been trying to figure out why the cancer came back to begin with, I mean sure, I didn’t take aromatase inhibitors but my nutrition has been great for two years. Except booze. I drink alcohol occasionally. Sadly I think meat and alcohol along with the crippling stress of Mini Me and high school and Juan Carlo’s magical thinking all helped the brain cancer grow. Tonight I say goodbye to booze and meat. We are taking Pea to Butcher & Boar. They’re food is really good. A complete carnivore’s paradise! My goal today is to not take any pain pills. Get at least 7500 steps, and laugh as much as possible.

Yesterday I took my one-third of a gram and smoked most of the day. I busted my arse walked almost 8 thousand steps.

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Friday and I’m tired. It’s mostly cloudy, it’s been that way all week. Rains and clouds. Yesterday I spent the whole day in bed reading and trying to find more information on diet. Yesterday I noticed that I read the news and get sucked into the drama and suddenly Juan is home from his twelve step group and I’ve spent Half my day reading about the craziness. Muslim bans and Turkey banning Darwinism, none of this stuff matters. I may be intrigued by it, but it surely has little relevance. The reality is that it is a vortex. Journalism sells. There are sure a lot of talking head experts on television that consume our time with politics. Rachel Madow, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck. I’m tired of how much time our politics take when our society doesn’t benefit anyone but the one percent.

Only in America are you born and any genetics that caused a medical problem is not the problem of society at large, it’s a problem for this family, for mom and dad. When the child is older it will be his responsibility to buy insurance. My Conservative friends think that just because I voted for Obama I don’t see the lies and corruption that his administration wrought. Health insurance via Obamacare isn’t supposed to cost you more than 10% of your income. Juan and I are your example. We have not used the ACA (Affordable Care Act) aka Obamacare until 2017. Americans health insurance comes with a large set of costs. The first cost is to get the insurance. It is called a premium. Insureds pay it every month. We pay $550 per month for our insurance. We then have individual deductibles that are $6700 per person. That is over $12,000 for just deductible. At 10% you’d think Juan and I earned $120,000 in 2017 as our projected earnings. Insurance costs in America are so prohibitively high that that the federal government, under the guise of the ACA, kicks money towards insurance companies to pay our premiums. The $550 for two adults is a discounted rate via the ACA.

Take last year through BCBS. Our premium was $1400 per month with Zack on a different plan for $150/moth. Don’t forget dental! In 2016 dental for Juan and I was $1200 for the year and then we paid our dentist directly for copays and what was not covered, as Delta Dental leaves services covered in ties. Fillings are covered at 50% or 60% or 70% and they do not cover while amalgam fillings even though that’s the only type of fillings the dentist recommends.

The two types of fillings are composite resin and amalgam metallic alloy. These two filling types are often referred to by patients and doctors as “white” and “silver” fillings because of their color.

The recommendation most doctors will make is for the placement of a composite filling. Composite fillings have a 40 year history and are comprised of a plastic resin that is initially soft but cures to full strength after a short exposure to the blue range of the light spectrum. Composite fillings are bonded or “glued” in place to the tooth on a microscopic level. The pros to using composite fillings are that they can be very small in size and adapt to any shape of cavity, come in a wide variety of colors to match your smile, and have no chance of darkening a tooth over time.

Amalgam alloy fillings are comprised of a mixture of copper, silver, tin and elemental (safe) mercury. They have a 100 year history of use. Amalgam fillings are held in place by the shape of the cavity. One major drawback of an amalgam filling is that if the cavity is too small the filling still has to be of sufficient size for proper hold and overall strength. The minimum size requirement of amalgam fillings limits the doctor when attempting to preserve natural tooth structure. Besides only coming in one color, the silver in amalgam fillings has the tendency to tarnish and percolate into the tooth over long periods of time, resulting in a gradual darkening of the tooth.

Composite fillings are not without their shortcomings however. During the bonding procedure where the doctor is placing the filling, the tooth needs to be kept as dry as possible. Any water introduced will retard the gluing of the filling into place and reduce the overall longevity of the filling. In certain circumstances, such as bleeding gums or hard to reach locations, if a filling cannot be kept dry enough, then an amalgam filling is a better, longer lasting choice.

Composite (plastic) fillings are also softer in nature than amalgam (metal) fillings. Because of this they tend to wear down faster in those who grind their teeth. Composite fillings also need to be kept clean and require regular brushing and flossing, otherwise they tend to develop a new cavity along their edges. Amalgam fillings are more forgiving in this aspect. If a cavity starts to form along its edge the silver tarnishes and helps seal out the bacteria, making it harder for the bacteria to dig deeper. However amalgam fillings will still experience recurrent cavities if not cared for properly as well.